"

"If I WAS you?" Mother came up and nipped his ear between thumb and
finger. "Robert, I am discouraged over you. All that I teach you in the
winter seems to evaporate from your mind during the summer when you go
out riding with the boys."

Buddy wiped his face with an up-and-down motion on the roller towel and
clanked across to the cupboard which he opened investigatively. "Any
pie?" he questioned as he peered into the corners. "Say, if I had the
handling of those Utes, mother, I'd fix 'em so they wouldn't be breaking
out every few months and making folks leave their homes to be pawed over
and burnt, maybe." He found a jar of fresh doughnuts and took three.

"They'll tromp around on your flower-beds--it just makes me SICK when
I think how they'll muss things up around here! I wish now," He blurted
unthinkingly, "that I hadn't killed the Injun that stole Rattler."

"Buddy! Not YOU." His mother made a swift little run across the kitchen
and caught him on his lean, hard-muscled young shoulders. "You--you
baby! What did you do? You didn't harm an Indian, did you, laddie?"

Buddy tilted his head downward so that she could not look into his eyes.
"I dunno as I harmed him--much," he said, wiping doughnut crumbs from
his mouth with one hasty sweep of his forearm. "But his horse came
outa the brush, and he never. I guess I killed him, all right. Anyway,
mother, I had to. He took a shot at me first. It was the day we lost
Rattler and the bronks," He added accurately.

Mother did not say anything for a minute, and Buddy hung his head lower,
dreading to see the hurt look which he felt was in her eyes.

"I have to pack a gun when I ride anywhere," he reminded her
defensively. "It ain't to balance me on the horse, either. If Injuns
take in after me, the gun's so I can shoot. And a feller don't shoot
up in the air--and if an Injun is hunting trouble he oughta expect that
maybe he might get shot sometime. You--you wouldn't want me to just run
and let them catch me, would you?"

Mother's hand slipped up to his head and pressed it against her breast
so that Buddy heard her heart beating steady and sweet and true. Mother
wasn't afraid--never, never!

"I know--it's the dreadful necessity of defending our lives. But you're
so young--just mother's baby man!"

Buddy looked up at her then, a laugh twinkling in his eyes. After all,
mother understood.

"I'm going to be your baby man always if you want me to, mother," He
whispered,